'Phantom': Scalpers' Bonanza

Inside the hotel, tickets to ''Phantom of the Opera'' were unavailable at any price. ''I don't have anything to do with that show,'' the man behind the theater-tickets counter at the Sheraton Centre said yesterday at lunch time. He threw up his hands and shrugged in response to a question he'd had a hundred times before. ''There's nothing available for more than a year, so I don't even try.''

Outside near the hotel's entrance, however, nobody shrugged. A ticket to ''Phantom of the Opera'' could be had, a limousine driver said, for $250. Or $175 if the transaction could be made right away.

Scalping, the illegal resale of tickets at a premium, was not born with ''Phantom.'' Theater patrons have always been willing to pay inflated prices to see the hottest shows.

With ''Phantom,'' however, which opens next Tuesday, that situation is exaggerated as never before: More people are paying more money to more different middlemen, whether they are charities selling high-priced tickets to raise money, scalpers working the street, ticket agents operating outside the city, or well-connected people with access to the large number of house seats available to the producer, the theater owner and certain members of the company. Sold to Be Resold

Before ''Phantom'' played its first preview at the Majestic Theater on Jan. 9, a record $16,583,417 worth of tickets had been sold to the show. Most of those tickets will be resold for much more than their face value. Cameron Mackintosh, who, with the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, is the show's producer, said last week that more than half of the advance sale for ''Phantom'' had been to theater parties, usually charities that resell tickets at a premium to raise funds.

Making a charitable contribution is not the only way one can spend a lot of money for a ticket to ''Phantom.'' On the day the Majestic box office opened in November (after several months of mail and group sales), people lined up overnight to buy tickets. Others lined up with them, brazenly offering cash to anyone who would buy four pairs to two performances - the limit set, for that day only, by the Shubert Organization, which owns the Majestic.

''When 'Les Mis' opened, a guy was at the box office, saying, 'Give me four on this date, six on this date,' '' Philip J. Smith, the vice president of Shubert, recalled last week. ''I couldn't tell you how much he'd spent on tickets. I was watching, and finally I couldn't take it anymore. So I asked him what he was planning to do with all those tickets.

''He said, 'I'm buying them for my employees, to use as an incentive.' He no more planned to use those tickets as an incentive than you or I. But it sure was a fast response. And it stopped me dead in my tracks.'' The Limit of the Law

New York State Arts and Cultural Affairs Law limits the surcharge on resale of tickets to $2 over the face value. But that applies only to ticket agents who deal in volume, according to Gary Walker, a spokesman for the city Consumer Affairs Department, which licenses all agents.

Excluded are businesses that provide a service with the tickets, such as taking credit cards or delivering. That leaves a huge loophole for scalpers.

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While the box office at the Majestic is out of nearly all the best orchestra and front mezzanine seats through next fall, for example, buyers (usually armed with an expense account) could have ''Phantom'' tickets for early February from any number of Connecticut and New Jersey agencies, at prices ranging from $100 to $150.

These agencies advertise in city publications; businesses use them to secure tickets for prized clients and they get bills that list the date, the number of tickets and the price paid. When he spots an advertisement from one of those brokers, said the show's general manager, Alan Wasser, a lawyer for the ''Phantom'' company threatens legal action. 'Scalping Is Scalping'

Although city regulations do not control resale of theater tickets outside the five boroughs, Mr. Walker said, ''scalping is scalping.'' Sometimes it's done by telephone, with a credit card; sometimes it happens in a doorway near the theater. On a recent evening, while a couple of dozen hopefuls waited outside the Majestic box office for cancellations, an offer was quietly made to one in the line that tickets could be had for $250 each - a situation even the nearby security guard could not contain.

''It's an enormous enforcement problem,'' Mr. Walker said. He added that despite the fact that the penalty for ticket scalping, a misdemeanor, is up to a year in prison, ''It's unlikely that most people, if charged, bother to show up for their court dates.''

Producers and theater owners exert enormous control over ticket sales. There are almost always tickets available to a show, regardless of the ''Sold Out'' notice over the box office window.

Many of the best seats - 64 at each performance of ''Phantom'' - are house seats available to the producer, the press agent and certain members of the company, according to the general manager. An additional 12 seats a performance are controlled by Shubert, Mr. Wasser said. On nights when the house is not taken up with a theater party, the number of house seats nearly doubles: 124 to the company, 38 to the theater owner. Those 162 tickets represent about 10 percent of the theater's 1,609 seats; factor in the 292 orchestra seats that have obstructed views of some of the most exciting action in the show, and the number of prime seats not readily available to the public is even more significant. Watching the House

House seats are closely watched, Mr. Wasser said: ''Virtually every contract we sign with members of the team includes a line that it is illegal to resell house seats. Beyond that warning, it's up to the individual's conscience. But we insist they keep records of where every pair of tickets goes, and those records are available to us and to the Attorney General's office.''

Recently, even some of the charities have taken to advertising tickets, for prices as high as $250 each. And the black market for tickets flourishes despite more diligent control over the box office. Mr. Wasser, the general manager, was surprised to learn of some regular advertising of ''Phantom'' tickets by scalpers, and the Department of Consumer Affairs registered only one complaint all last year about ticket scalping, according to Mr. Walker.

At least until the Fourth of July weekend, when most of the theater parties are over, there is virtually no such thing as a $50 ticket to ''Phantom of the Opera.''

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A version of this review appears in print on January 20, 1988, on Page C00015 of the National edition with the headline: 'Phantom': Scalpers' Bonanza. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe